A conversation with Jean Isaacs and Steve Baker is often punctuated with laughter — for instance, when they talk about which came first, their artistic partnership or their romance.

“First work, right?” says Isaacs, who is the director of San Diego Dance Theater.

“She was looking for a piano player, and I was looking for a dance company,” quips Baker, a pianist and composer who has performed with the likes of Mundell Lowe, Charles McPherson and Kenny G. He’s also the dean of Arts, Languages and Communication at Grossmont College.

Isaacs and Baker met six years ago and almost immediately started their first collaboration — the January 2005 edition of Isaacs’ “Cabaret Dances,” which offers dance and music in a cabaret setting. Preparing for that show, they worked together “every day and night for almost three months,” Baker says. “We liked it, and we just kept doing it.”

Baker soon moved into Isaacs’ Rancho Peñasquitos home, and the two have partnered on every “Cabaret Dances” since 2005. They’ve also done other joint projects, including last May’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Isaacs choreographed a dance to the George Gershwin classic. Baker adapted the orchestral score for piano and guitar and performed it live, with Fred Benedetti on guitar.

“Rhapsody in Blue” provided the seed for this year’s “Cabaret Dances.” Titled “By George/By Jean,” the show will reprise “Rhapsody” and feature another 11 Gershwin tunes. Isaacs is creating new dances to eight of the songs, while the other three are purely musical numbers. (There’s also one piece, to a recorded score, by company member Anthony Diaz, who got an honorable mention in the Young Choreographers Prize competition last month.)

This is the 10th annual “Cabaret Dances,” and there are several firsts this time around. After trying various venues, Isaacs is using the Garfield Theatre for the first time. And many of the nine dancers in the show are 20-somethings who are relatively new to working with Isaacs.

Another landmark is that all of the music for her dances will be performed live, primarily by Baker, Benedetti and vocalist Rachel Drexler. In the past, she’s used a mix of live music and recordings.

“The Gershwin tunes are marvelous,” Isaacs says. “People think of them as dated, but we’re working with some edgier adaptations, (like) a Bon Jovi-Richie Sambora version of ‘How Long Has This Been Going On’ and the Janis Joplin adaptation of ‘Summertime.’

“There’s only one thing that gives a nod to musical theater, the finale, ‘Stairway to Paradise.’ It’s about how dance is the way to get to heaven. It doesn’t feel dated in any way. It could have been written yesterday.”

Baker’s job involves creating arrangements that give the flavor of the versions Isaacs has chosen.

“Obviously, I can’t be the Count Basie Orchestra,” he says. “What I can do is approximate the style and try to convey the energy and tone and density of that kind of arrangement, so it would have a Big Band feel. … That’s the challenging part to me. How can I accomplish the essence of whatever that recording is, but with live music?”

His toughest challenge in that regard was last spring’s adaptation of “Rhapsody in Blue” — which he tackled out of necessity after plans to work with a college orchestra fell through. Having to dive into the score and “translate the orchestral parts into piano and guitar” helped him appreciate Gershwin’s timelessness.

“What I discovered was that Gershwin’s choice of harmony at first is really standard, basically the same harmony the ragtime composers used,” Baker says. “But the way he orchestrated that harmony is very modern.

“Gershwin spent some time with (French composer) Maurice Ravel. ... If you take that really modern-sounding and American-sounding harmony from ragtime and use the impressionistic orchestration techniques of Ravel, that is still pretty modern, even now.”

As Baker’s and Isaacs’ personal-professional relationship has grown, they took the recent step of adding a sound recording studio to their home. They’ve even talked about marriage.

“That comes up fairly often, with our children especially,” says Baker; he and Issacs have four grown children between them.